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Fani Willis and top lieutenant mocked for motion in YSL case

homesafetytechpros — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 17:02:04 +0000

Left: FILE – Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis appears during a hearing regarding defendant Harrison Floyd, a leader in the organization Black Voices for Trump, as part of the Georgia election indictments, Nov. 21, 2023, in Atlanta (Dennis Byron/Hip Hop Enquirer via AP, File). Right: Jeffery “Young Thug” Williams (Law&Crime).

With equal parts derision and seriousness, a Georgia attorney representing one of the defendants in the YSL racketeering (RICO) trial filed a motion on Tuesday castigating the latest tactic employed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her top lieutenant.

The title of the defense motion sums up the current dispute:

Opposition To State’s Motion In Limine To Allow The State To Present All Relevant Evidence To The Jury And To Deny Defendant Objections To The Presentation Of Relevant Evidence On The Basis That Said Evidence Is A “Waste Of Time”

A footnote in the filing by defense attorney Doug Weinstein concedes: “Wow. That is really a mouthful.”

But whatever might be considered unnecessarily loquacious about the title of the defense motion is entirely due to an earlier motion filed by the state, the responding lawyer says.

The prosecution’s motion is titled:

Motion In Limine To Allow The State To Present All Relevant Evidence To The Jury And To Deny Defendant Objections To The Presentation Of Relevant Evidence On The Basis That Said Evidence Is A “Waste Of Time”

While the yearlong-plus trial against Jeffery “Young Thug” Williams and others has mostly been in hiatus this month due to hurricane season and several missing police reports, the state and the defense have continued motions practice.

In the state’s motion, Willis and Fulton Count Chief Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love moved to “present all relevant evidence to the jury and to deny objections to the presentation of relevant evidence on the basis that said evidence is a ‘waste of time.””

In response, Weinstein accused the state of filing a “frivolous” motion that “genuinely merits no response” but said he felt “compelled” to do so because it appeared prosecutors were planning “some form of carpet bombing of additional, pointless, cumulative evidence.”

Such evidence, the defense attorney argued, was “clearly excludable” under the relevant rule of evidence. He also accused prosecutors of “laying down some type of suppression fire” with their motion.

The defense mocks Willis and Love, at length, for the conclusory and unsourced nature of their latest motion:

In a surprisingly succinct and efficient bit of lawyering from the State, the State requests that this Honorable Court deny all future defense 403 Objections regarding the State presenting relevant evidence that is a waste of time. The State cites neither statute, case law, nor the highest law of the land according to the State, Carlson on Evidence, to support its position that the Court take up the challenge of overriding the edicts of the Georgia Legislature, along with virtually every other legislative and judicial body in our nation, by ignoring O.C.G.A. 24-4-403.

The merciless mocking continues.

“Ironically, the State’s motion is a perfect example of the need for this Honorable Court to weigh in on the State wasting the time of all involved in the present case by barring otherwise relevant evidence that is a waste of time under Rule 403,” the defense motion goes on. “In a sense, the motion needs no opposition as the motion itself serves as its own evident opposition.”

Last week, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Paige Reese Whitaker, who assumed control over the long and winding trial after Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Ural D. Glanville was recused, criticized Love for “poor lawyering.”

“I can’t figure out what it is,” the judge told the prosecutor. “But it is baffling to me that somebody with your years of experience, time after time, seems to purposefully hide the ball as long as you possibly can.”

Young Thug and five other codefendants — Shannon “SB” Stillwell, Marquavius “Qua” Huey, Deamonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick, Quamarvious “Qua” Nichols, and Rodalius “Lil Rod” Ryan — face a long trial after an 86-page RICO indictment was filed against 28 total defendants in 2022. Since then, nine defendants have taken plea deals, including Antonio “Mounk Tounk” Sledge and Williams’ brother Quantavious “Unfoonk” Grier. Others have had their cases separated.

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Hearing related to Trump RICO case goes off the rails

homesafetytechpros — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 23:19:51 +0000

Left to right: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis arrives before she speaks after winning the Democratic primary on Tuesday, May 21, 2024, in Buckhead, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson), Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rachel Krause (Fulton County Superior Court), Attorney Ashleigh Merchant speaks in court Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, Pool).

During a marathon Thursday hearing related to the Georgia election interference and racketeering (RICO) case against Donald Trump, the judge overseeing the case lost her patience with both sides.

“Okay. Listen. Everybody. We need to dial all of this back,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rachel Krause said, interspersing a series of briefly pregnant pauses, her annoyance palpable, as the open records-focused hearing stretched well past hour four.

In the case, attorney Ashleigh Merchant, who represents co-defendant Michael Roman in the underlying RICO matter, has accused Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office of violating the Georgia Open Records Act by failing to provide documents related to the employment and remuneration of Nathan Wade – the former special assistant district attorney forced to resign from the RICO prosecution due to his onetime romantic relationship with Willis.

Earlier on Thursday, Krause gave Merchant a qualified win – allowing her to question a member of the DA’s office, in detail and at length, about the ways those public records requests were handled.

On the stand was Dexter Bond, the deputy of operations for the DA’s office. In his role, he serves as the agency’s records custodian.

After several minutes of preliminary questions about the county’s open records portal, Merchant brought a series of documents up on a public viewing screen. Starting with the DA’s employee handbook entries on public records compliance, the attorney meticulously guided her witness through each document – and throughout his testimony, Bond played the role of a combative witness.

The back-and-forth came to a standstill when Merchant asked Bond if “it was possible” she “believed” the DA’s had complied with a certain public records request. The clear upshot of this question was that Merchant now thinks she was intentionally misled into believing the DA’s office had complied with the request when it had not done so.

An attorney for the DA’s employees objected on grounds of speculation. Though terming the question “pretty argumentative,” Krause overruled and directed the witness to answer.

Bond replied, raising his voice, said: “When it comes to you and what I think you believe, it can be anything, Ashleigh Merchant.”

A few beats passed before the judge laid into the witness and the questioning attorney about their apparently shared lack of respect – and the general tenor of the late afternoon session.

“I feel like instead of being educated, I’m listening to an argument,” Krause said. “And I’m tired of listening to an argument. I would like to be educated about the processes that Mr. Bond follows to perform his duties. And about what you believe, Mrs. Merchant, to be the shortcomings of what those processes are.”

The judge felt obligated to make this intervention after roughly an hour of questioning over various documents. And, to that end, the judge said, the process had been a bit too laborious.

“I would also remind everybody that I can read quite well,” Krause sarcastically intoned. “And that most of what we’re arguing about is reflected in written documents – that are part of the record – that I can review. Now, to the extent that the parties wish to understand what was meant by those words, those are fair questions. But half of our time has been spent with people trying to agree that the document says this or the document says that.”

The judge then essayed a metaphor but cut herself off mid-sentence.

“Let’s just, everybody, take a deep breath, and try not to argue with each other,” Krause went on. “And that applies to Mrs. Merchant and Mr. Bond – in terms of trying to answer the questions so that the court can understand what processes are followed and whether they were followed, or should have been, in this case. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

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